The desponding and indignant expression of her countenance is sufficient without the words.

Her

resolution being wrought up to the highest pitch,

she exclaims,

"Come thou not near me;

Or this dagger shall quit my Romeo's death."

Her wild attachment to the spot increases,

"Go, get thee hence; for I will not away."

She then looks franticly round, as if by chance, and discovers the phial,

"What's here? A phial!--Romeo's timeless end.—
O, churl! drink all; and leave no friendly drop

To help me after!—I will kiss thy lips;

Haply, some poison yet doth hang on them.-"

The last words are expressed with peculiar pathos and sensibility, and her eagerness to finish the catastrophe is inimitable,

"Then I'll be brief.-O, happy dagger!

[Stabs herself.

[Dies.

This is thy sheath!—there rest,—and let me die.

Perhaps there is no character so difficult to personate as the lover, especially in the female. The acting of Miss O'Neill was so superior in Juliet, as from the first to electrify the audience. She possest over them, from what we have described, a magic charm throughout the whole representation, and every one left the theatre with the impression, that she was the very Juliet Shakspeare drew, that she spoke, looked, and felt the character. Her appearance on this night fixed her fame its influence on the audience may be compared to the famous letter of Cæsar-Venividi-vinci.-She came-she was seen-she van

quished.

BELVIDERA.

Miss O'Neill having thus so successfully sustained the ordeal of London criticism, from the tender and lovesick Juliet, past on to a character of still greater interest, the delineation of con

jugal and filial affection in the person of Belvidera, as pourtrayed in Otway's Tragedy of Venice Preserved. This tragedy is the most finished of Otway's pieces, a man, great as a dramatic poet, but who literally died of want, while his productions have conferred plenty and happiness on others. The age in which he lived was insensible to his merit, though ample justice has been done him in the succeeding period, and the two master-pieces of his pen, Venice Preserved, and The Orphan, have continued standard representations, and will continue so, while nature and taste regulate the British stage. His Venice Preserved first appeared in 1685, when his talents as a writer were fully matured. It is written with much energy, with a powerful impression of nature, and an interesting concatenation of circumstances; and it possesses all that pathos in the language, and those attractive sentiments of the heroine, that render it one of the most affecting representations that grace the British stage. It is one also, that has shewn to advantage, the powers of most of the great actresses at successive periods, from the time of Mrs. Oldfield to our present Heroine.

Perhaps no play is better constructed for stage effect than this. The attention is kept alive throughout the whole, and there are few scenes but what are interesting. The incidents to work upon the resolution of Jaffier, and put into the mouth of Pierre, in the second scene, are admirably selected; when describing the ruin of his house and fortune, he tells him,

"The very bed, which, on thy wedding-night,
Received thee to the arms of Belvidera,

The scene of all thy joys, was violated

By the coarse hand of filthy dungeon villains,
And thrown among the common lumber.”

The manner also in which Belvidera is first introduced, give a strong prepossession in favour of an actress like Miss O'Neill, where soft and tender thrill is so much suited to the situation, and a universal stillness and anxiety pervades every pulse of the house, when she is heard to repeat, behind the

scenes,

"Lead me, lead me, my virgins,

To that kind voice.

My lord, my love, my refuge !"

The excess of feminine tenderness she throws into that passage in the same scene, is also exquisite, where she says,

"Oh! I will love thee, even in madness love thee!
Though my distracted senses should forsake me,
I'd find some intervals, when my poor heart
Should 'suage itself, and be let loose to thine.
Though the bare earth be all our resting-place,
Its roots our food, some cliff our habitation,
I'll make this arm a pillow for thine head :

And, as thou sighing liest, and swell'd with sorrow,

Creep to thy bosom, pour the balm of love'

Into my soul, and kiss thee to thy rest;

Then praise our God, and watch thee till the morning."

These sentiments are much the same as Prior throws into the poem of his Nutbrown Maid, and shew that nature and passion dictate the same sentiments, in similar situations, to all poets.

The scene where Belvidera is introduced to the conspirators is admirably pourtrayed by our Heroine. The shock she experiences at the discovery of the change in Jaffier's appearance and manner. Her pathetic invocation of heaven to bless him with patience, and his calm but apparently severe